Jann Wenner No Longer Part Of The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame's Board Of Directors

The founder of Rolling Stone magazine, Jann Wenner, is no longer a part of the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame’s Board of Directors following his offensive comments about women and Black people in music.

“Jann Wenner has been removed from the board of directors of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation,” Joel Peresman, the president and chief executive of the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, said in a statement to The New York Times over the weekend.

TMZ reports that a vote was taken amongst the board members to decide Wenner’s fate with the foundation. Bruce Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, was reportedly the sole dissenting voice regarding his departure.

Wenner co-founded the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame and, until 2020, served as the foundation’s chairman.

Wenner came under fire over the weekend after a recent interview with The New York Times was published. Promoting his new book, The Masters, Wenner was asked to address the seven white men who make up the interview subjects in his new book: Bruce Springsteen, Mick Jagger, Bono, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, John Lennon, and Pete Townshend.

Defending the lack of diversity in The Masters, Wenner argued that Black artists and women in music “just didn’t articulate at the level” compared to the white men interviewed in his book.

Little, Brown And Company, the publisher of his book, since issued an apology from Wenner to The New York Times, writing, “In my interview with The New York Times, I made comments that diminished the contributions, genius, and impact of Black and women artists and I apologize [sic] wholeheartedly for those remarks.”

Wenner continued, “The Masters is a collection of interviews I’ve done over the years that seemed to me to best represent an idea of rock ‘n’ roll’s impact on my world; they were not meant to represent the whole of music, and it’s diverse and important originators but to reflect the high points of my career and interviews I felt illustrated the breadth and experience in that career.

“They don’t reflect my appreciation and admiration for myriad totemic, world-changing artists whose music and ideas I revere and will celebrate and promote as long as I live. I totally understand the inflammatory nature of badly chosen words and deeply apologize [sic] and accept the consequences.”

Jann Wenner co-founded Rolling Stone in 1967 and left the magazine in 2019. Since his departure, Wenner has written two books, The Masters, which will be released on 26 September, and his memoir Like A Rolling Stone, released last year. The book was a New York Times bestseller.